The Five Commandments Of Startup Success: How To Survive And Thrive

Launching a startup business is never going to be easy. The more you do it, and the longer you’re an entrepreneur, the more you get an instinct for it. But at the beginning there is a great deal of pressure. Making it successful, making your business grow, will consume a lot of your time. There’s no short-cutting it. But there are some pieces of advice that you should bear in mind – the commandments of startups, if you will.

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Your Startup Shall Be Scaleable

When a business starts – unless it is funded in whole by a megabucks backer – it needs to be small. While so many of the slogans of the business world talk about going big, winning big and so forth, growth comes with time. So while starting small is essential, the ability to upscale along the way to becoming a big deal is important too.

You Shall Make Smart Personnel Choices

When you start a business and have ambition to make it work, it can be adrenalizing. In many ways, adrenaline is like any stimulant. It has a galvanizing effect which makes you more enthusiastic. But it can make you a little bit incautious. You can find yourself offering jobs to friends, family and anyone you like the look of. In personnel, you need to have a plan and stick to it. Hire for skills, and hire short term. A startup can’t afford to throw money around.

You Shall Take Advantage Of Technology

Building a startup business has become a reachable goal for more people because of technological advances. It is now possible to run a business with nothing more than a laptop and an idea. But even if your business is more complicated than that, let technology simplify it as far as possible. Use cloud-based storage as much as possible and have your POS hosted online. Saving space means saving money.

You Shall Remember That Lean = Agile

A business that carries more weight than it needs is a business unprepared for a difficult time. The biggest companies in the world have thousands, even a million employees. They can afford to do this and in their model it actually helps. A startup in its first few years needs to decide what it can’t function without, and stick to that. You then add more as you grow.

You Shall Not Work For Free Or For “Exposure”

More and more news stories are emerging of companies and individuals hiring people to work for them for no pay. The deal on offer here is that, yeah, you won’t get money, but you will get publicity. And you can’t put a price tag on that, right? Well, yes, you can. Exposure won’t pay your phone bill.

In all honesty, so many of the rules of launching a startup boil down to one word: Discipline. You will have plenty of enthusiasm and that’s essential. In order to balance that out and stop it carrying you away, discipline is indispensable. While there is no magic formula for success, you will need a lot of those two ingredients. And a bit of luck, but you can’t make that!